Memorial thanking for the bestowal of a salary warrant (祿牌)謝賜祿陴表
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) 東國李相國集 · Yi Gyubo · Compiled 1241 (Goryeo, 28th year of King Gojong); revised and enlarged 1251 · 1 passages · 90 Chinese characters · reading time 1 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 30 The collected writings of Yi Gyubo of Goryeo, gathered and cut in woodblock by his son Yi Ham in 1241 and revised and enlarged by his grandson Yi Ikbae in 1251. It holds poems and rhapsodies, memorials and reports sent up to the king, records written for temples and pagodas, stele and tomb inscriptions, letters and prefaces, and the state letters that passed to and from the Mongols during the invasions. The Lay of King Dongmyeong, which sings the founder of Goguryeo, stands in volume 3 of the first collection, and the daily life of a man who called himself the White Cloud Layman — with his wine, his zither and his verse — fills the later collection. The book closes with the last poem he wrote as his eyes failed and he laid down the brush, and with the dirge and tomb inscription others made for him after his death.
And so forth. The letter of bestowal came suddenly, and the issue from the storehouse has moistened us all about. Throughout the hundred officials there is gladness, and knocking at the ninefold gate we bow our heads low.
Your servants, vessels of a peck and a pint, have taken the charge of the pivot of the state. Receiving three hundred shares of grain, we merely incur the satire of the poet; and at the words about spilling the food of the cauldron at the Nine in the Fourth Place (九四), we always fear the calamity of the image (象) in the Book of Changes. Bearing this favour again, we reverently do but add to our shame.
Shall your servants not dare, at every meal, to think upon the thickness of your rearing and feeding and so make it our appointed aim to repay the royal favour; and, receiving a salary that stands in place of ploughing, to think upon the hardship of sowing and reaping and so not contend for the people's profit? And so forth.
Interlinear notes 3
上同
As above.
中謝。
Here the words of thanks (中謝) are inserted.
祿陴 — the base text has 陴 (a parapet), but it is taken as an error for 牌, and so the title and the body are rendered "salary warrant." — Translator